The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  “Fascinating. I’ll wipe down the floor.”

  Reeds Unbroken, Pearl’s Promise, The Liar’s Knot, Aža’s Call, A Spiraling Fire, Drowning Breath. She explained the cards while Tanaquis cleaned the boards: endurance, reward, trust, illusions, passion, fear. Or if they were veiled, the dark sides of those concepts. “I’m not sure how to interpret their significance, though. There aren’t any six-card layouts that I’m aware of.”

  “We’ll work with it anyway and see what happens,” Tanaquis said cheerfully, presenting Meppe with four sticks of chalk. “Right, cousin. Off with your boots.”

  When Tanaquis removed the curse from Donaia, Giuna, and Renata, the numinat had been prepared before they arrived at the townhouse. Now, twice in less than a day, Renata was treated to the spectacle of a master inscriptor laying down lines that could save a life.

  Tanaquis didn’t work like Vargo. Her mutterings were all to herself instead of to an Acrenix ghost, and devoid of any profanity or frustration. Where Vargo’s movements were calculated and precise, Tanaquis danced barefoot around the figures she was chalking, each step and figure leading fluidly into the next.

  “I dabble in numinatria, you know,” Meppe said to Renata, fiddling with his boots as though uncertain whether he was allowed to put them back on now that he’d made his bird wings on the floor. “I’ve never understood how an inscriptor could get so lost in their work that they imbued a numinat by accident. But this…”

  “Don’t worry,” Tanaquis said brightly as she skipped out of the circle to examine her work. “I’m not quite ready to know the cosmos that intimately.”

  The process of uncursing Meppe seemed much less dramatic than Renata remembered. Because there was only one of him? Because he was less intensely cursed? Or because she was an outside spectator? Regardless, it was a relief when Tanaquis declared the process complete. Meppe, still bemused, stepped out of the framework and finally put his boots back on. “Thank you for humoring us,” Renata said, favoring him with her most dazzling smile, before remembering that Meppe only had eyes for Idaglio. “My apologies for interrupting your day. Tanaquis, would you mind if I stayed to consult with you on a separate matter?”

  “Of course.” Tanaquis glanced down at her chalk-streaked trousers and bare toes. Then her stomach grumbled audibly. “Perhaps you could find us food while I put on clean clothes?”

  Renata accompanied Meppe outside, then came back a short time later with the corner ostretta’s errand boy at her heels, bearing a hamper emanating all sorts of tempting smells. The actual taste proved less impressive than the scents advertised, but she’d eaten far worse in her time. Tanaquis joined her, now wearing a surcoat with an ink stain at the knee, and tucked in like she was a fireplace someone had forgotten to supply with coal.

  “That was fascinating,” Tanaquis said after she’d removed and eaten the filling from her dumplings, then moved on to the limp, steamed wrappers. “Last night I called the cleansing precautionary, but there’s no question it was necessary.” She finished rolling a wrapper and studied Renata with an intensity that would have made most people squirm. “Also interesting that you correctly identified the source as the Indestor register. Did you learn that from your pattern cards?”

  Eating while having such conversations was useful; the time spent chewing and swallowing covered any hesitation. “To be honest,” Renata said, “I made that up. I didn’t want to tell Meppe the Traementis used to be cursed. But I had a dreadful nightmare about him last night, and it put me on edge.”

  “Quite a lot of nightmares going around,” Tanaquis murmured, rolling another dumpling wrapper into a ball, heedless of the grease on her fingers. “Just Meppe?”

  Renata nodded. Grey had told her a good deal more over their cups of chocolate; he didn’t think House Fintenus had a medallion. Half of them tended to be in the hands of the Cinquerat: Tuat with Argentet, Tricat with Fulvet, Quarat with Prasinet, Sessat with Caerulet, and Sebat with Iridet, following the numinatrian associations of those seats. Many of the others could be tracked by the way the numen’s influence spilled outward through the holders’ registers. Quinat and Ninat had been difficult to locate, but the hedonism of House Extaquium’s members pointed toward them having Noctat, while the social dominance of Coscanum suggested they had the Illi medallion that represented ten. And until Beldipassi approached him, Grey had suspected that Vargo’s extraordinary rise was driven by the other half of Illi, representing zero.

  But knowing where the medallions might be wasn’t enough. He needed to destroy them. And while that process might start with Beldipassi’s Illi-zero, if she could get Tricat back for him—make up for her mistake in losing it…

  In a rare show of empathy, Tanaquis said, “I could check the household again to confirm, but I would hate to add to Donaia’s worries if she were to find out.” She frowned at her lumpy dumpling ball. “I suppose we’ll have to rely on pattern.”

  By now Renata was used to the aura of mingled curiosity and dissatisfaction that surrounded Tanaquis whenever pattern came up. It drove the woman mad that she couldn’t neatly slot its intuitive workings into her ordered cosmos—and not for lack of trying.

  Wiping her own fingers clean, Renata said, “If it’s any comfort, the other puzzle I have for you may well need a numinatrian solution. Do you know of a way to bring a physical object out of the realm of mind?”

  “You mean like your prismatium mask?” Tanaquis leaned forward, nearly upsetting the table and its platters. “Not yet. Vargo provided very scant details of his experience. Protecting your privacy, when there are things to be learned! I’d hoped his involvement in the Praeteri might pry it out of him, or that you might, but—”

  Tanaquis drew back. “I forgot. You had a fight.”

  Renata wasn’t about to share details of the Rook’s purpose with Vargo, even if the pattern she’d laid had indicated that he might somehow be involved. Not that she would tell Tanaquis, either—but she had much more confidence in her ability to sell Tanaquis on a false story. “During the Night of Hells, I lost a numinatrian medallion I’d been wearing. I’d like to get it back.”

  “By some means other than dosing yourself with ash and falling in? Hmmm. Apart from that mask, I’ve never heard of someone bringing an object back from a spirit trip. Do you still have it?”

  “The mask? Yes.”

  “Have it sent here. I’d like to study it.” Tanaquis tapped her knee, overlaying the ink stain with grease.

  Renata gathered herself to leave. “I’ll do that right away.”

  “What’s the nature of the medallion?” Tanaquis asked suddenly.

  “I’m not sure what god it invokes—I’ve never really learned the sigils.” Perhaps Grey would be able to answer that once he got a good look at Beldipassi’s. “But it was a fairly simple configuration of three overlapping Tricats.”

  Tanaquis hummed. “So Tricat in a tripled arrangement, left in the realm of mind. Fascinating. Why didn’t you mention this in the account you wrote for me after the Night of Hells?”

  Djek.

  At least it made sense to be taken aback. “I didn’t think it was relevant. You wanted to know what sorts of scenarios we’d encountered and so forth; it didn’t occur to me that you would want to know I’d lost a piece of jewelry.”

  “Not relevant!” Tanaquis’s voice rose in pitch as she shot to her feet. “What sort of nonsense are they teaching in Seteris these days? A physically embodied numinat in the realm of mind? Who knows what ripples that might cast into the real world! And by ripples, I mean floodwaters. Tricat tripled, and brought there by ash… It would mean the breakdown or unhealthy growth of familial and communal bonds. Failures of justice. Inability to compromise. Veng—

  “Oh.” Tanaquis fell back into her chair as quickly as she’d risen. “Not might. Has.”

  Some realizations hit suddenly, like a knife to the ribs. Others took longer to sink in… but left you bleeding just as badly. “You mean—” Renata couldn’t
have stood to leave if she wanted to; her knees wouldn’t hold her. The grinding breakdown of business in the Charterhouse; Branek trying to bind all the Stretsko to the Anduske; even well-intentioned things like Giarron Quientatis’s rash attempt to adopt an entire orphanage.

  And inexplicable horrors like Meda Scurezza slaughtering her entire family.

  “No,” she whispered. “Surely one piece of numinatria couldn’t be responsible for all of that.”

  Not even something that belonged to Kaius Rex?

  Tanaquis’s eyes had taken on an all too familiar glow as the tide of her own thoughts caught her up. “Responsible? No more than the rain is responsible for weeds growing. Numinatria in the realm of mind—but don’t Vraszenians call it Ažerais’s Dream? A place of pattern. What we’re seeing right now might be the result of those two things working in tandem. Which means it is possible!”

  “Tanaquis.” Renata leaned forward to grip her wrist, fingers digging in. “If this is causing problems in the city, we have to get it out of there. How do we do that?”

  She had to get it back. Not just to help the Rook. Because she had lost the medallion—let it fall to the ground, unheeded and unimportant, when she turned the zlyzen against Gammer Lindworm—and who knew how much of what was happening in Nadežra right now was her fault.

  “I don’t know,” Tanaquis said with an excited grin. She tamped it down when Renata’s grip tightened. “I don’t know yet—but you have pattern, and I have my compass, my edge, my chalk, and myself. Together, we can figure it out!”

  17

  One Poppy Weeps

  Isla Čaprila, Eastbridge: Canilun 5

  Renata made it to the foot of Vargo’s steps the next morning before she wondered if this was a mistake.

  But she was here, and if she backed out now, she wasn’t sure she would find the courage to try again. Climbing the steps, she rang the bell with more confidence than she felt.

  No answer came. After pulling the chain twice more, she was about ready to try his Dockwall office when the door was yanked open.

  Vargo looked like he’d played sixes with death and lost every hand. His hair was lank with oil, his bloodshot eyes smudged with kohl two days old. Wrapped in a sumptuous lounging robe of blue and green brocades in a patchwork quilt, the collar open enough to show the scar slashing down his neck, he looked like what the world called him: street trash in the guise of nobility.

  He stared at her as though he couldn’t dredge up the energy for a proper scowl. “The fuck do you want?”

  “I—” She was off to a splendid start, not even able to offer a worthwhile greeting. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “I’m alive. I assume Serrado is, too, or you’d have come by sooner.” Scraping fingernails through his stubble, he stood aside. “Well, come on. En’t gonna do this on the stoop.”

  He led her to the back of the house and the morning room where the two of them had breakfasted together, what seemed like a lifetime ago. A bowl of congealing tolatsy sat on the table; the small warming numinat on the sideboard held a basin of gently steaming water instead of a teapot. The razor and soap waiting alongside said Vargo had been preparing to shave, but he ignored them in favor of slumping onto one of the plum velvet couches. “Don’t have coffee for you. There’s tea if you feel like brewing it.” He waved at the sideboard.

  It would provide a distraction and something to do with her hands, but Renata sat instead. “I thanked you the other night, but given the state you were in, I’m not sure if the words registered.”

  “They registered. You’re welcome. Don’t mention it, but I think I already covered that.” The lift of his scarred brow added, Anything else?

  “I’ve told Captain Serrado nothing,” she assured him. “But—well, I expected you to have questions.”

  Vargo merely shrugged. “Our business is the river numinat. Unless this has something to do with that, what does it matter?”

  It matters because you nearly died saving him. And because the story she’d crafted to explain Grey’s state was designed to draw Vargo out, offering footholds for getting him to talk about other matters.

  But if he wasn’t going to ask, she would have to prod. “You mentioned the Praeteri that night, when you saw the marks on Captain Serrado. Why?”

  “Praeteri numinata can do some unpleasant things. As you found out the hard way. I was going to warn you about that, but I was too late.” He toyed with the spoon in the congealed tolatsy, standing it up in the rice porridge and watching it slowly list to one side. “As for death curses, who knows what sort of secrets are shared past the gates we’ve seen? It seemed a logical deduction.”

  That was far from the whole truth—but she could hardly admit she’d overheard his conversation with Alsius. Nor, for that matter, could she bring up the absurd possibility that Alsius was somehow the spirit of Ghiscolo’s dead brother inhabiting the body of a king peacock spider. She wished one of them would make a mental comment, but either the spider wasn’t around, or she’d somehow lost the ability to hear them.

  Too many secrets between them. Hers as well as his. “What happened in the temple that night… it took me by surprise. I’m not sure what Diomen wanted to achieve; I can only hope he didn’t get it. And that you’ll forgive me for saying such things to you.”

  A laugh ghosted from him. “Apologizing for speaking the truth? Fine. You’re forgiven. I figure I owe you after…”

  It was almost exactly what he’d said when she came to him after her sleeplessness was cured. Vargo must have heard the echo, too, because he grimaced and muttered, “I didn’t know what Mettore was going to do. I didn’t think you’d be hurt.” Mouth twisting, he added, “Saying that a lot these days.”

  His forgiveness came too easily to be real. In the temple she’d spoken with the intent of wounding him—and it seemed she’d succeeded. A sudden impulse of regret made her say, “I won’t pretend that night wasn’t horrific. But what cut most deeply was believing you didn’t care. After I found out… I overheard you talking to Ghiscolo Acrenix. He asked if I was going to be a problem, and you—you said, ‘I don’t get attached to my tools.’”

  Vargo’s jaw tightened. In a low voice, Renata said, “After that, I thought I’d misread you completely. That everything between us had been a lie from the start.”

  “No reason it should occur to you that I might be lying to Ghiscolo, instead.”

  “In that moment? When I’d just learned about your deal with Mettore? No. You sounded very convincing, and you have a certain reputation.” She slid one hand into her pocket. “A reputation that is not unfounded… but also not the whole story.”

  Hoping the trembling of her hand didn’t show, she laid the mask of the Black Rose on the table.

  The possibility of admitting that truth to him had crossed her mind yesterday, on her way back from Kingfisher. She hadn’t been at all sure she would do it, though—not until he’d delivered that bitter, resigned reply.

  She suppressed the urge to snatch the mask back as Vargo picked it up. He let the fabric slide like petals through his fingers, then held it up and studied her through the lace, as though looking for hints of the Black Rose in Renata’s tense expression.

  With a sudden gesture, he let the mask drop. “Now I understand why you brought Serrado to me—but I’m still confused. You hate me… so you’ve been helping me?”

  She sighed and rubbed one hand over her face. “It began as spying on you. After Sostira told me what you’d done, I wanted to keep a closer eye on what you were doing. Especially when you thought I wasn’t around.”

  “Sostira.” A flush darkened Vargo’s skin, and a hint of murder glinted in his eyes. Lurching to his feet, he went to the sideboard and fell silent for the time it took him to swap the basin for the teapot and measure out the tea.

  When he spoke again, something unsteady threaded through his voice. “There’s your real enemy. She’s a danger to you as long as she holds Argentet. I ca
n only destroy so many packets from Seteris before one gets through.”

  A small noise escaped her, and Vargo turned to look. “What?”

  Three different responses rose to her tongue, all of them delicate, political—manipulative. But she was tired of dancing around things. “I’m trying to figure you out, Eret Vargo.”

  “I en’t that complicated a man, Renata.” The emphasis on her name, bare of title, deliberately mocked the respect she’d just paid him. As did his slipping accent. “You said it yourself. I’m a jumped-up Lower Bank rat. Anyone from Froghole to Dockwall could tell you what I’m about. The problem is, you cuffs en’t got a shit-crusted clue what people are like when they weren’t born with a pair of gloves shoved up their ass.” He punctuated his self-assassination with a shark’s smile.

  Then his speech shifted back to studied elegance. “Thank you for your apology, but we both know what you said in that Praeteri numinat was the Lumen’s own truth. What’s the saying? ‘There’s no washing off Lower Bank filth.’”

  She rose to her feet, facing him across a breakfast room that suddenly felt both too small and very large. Vargo merely arched his brow again, as if daring her to refute him.

  Instead she nodded at the abandoned basin of water resting next to his forgotten shaving tools. “May I?”

  He shrugged and went back to his seat, dropping down hard enough to make it creak, while she dipped the block of soap into the basin. Working it into a lather, she said, “Perhaps you’re right, and there’s no washing it off.” Her hands muffled her voice as she rubbed them over her skin. “Nothing about Nadežra is clean, from Lower Bank to Upper. But this is and always has been a city of masks.”

  That last line was delivered in her own accent, and she turned toward him with her face scrubbed clean.

  Vargo jerked upright, gaze flicking to the sideboard as though searching for the cosmetics behind her transformation, before fixing again on her. When she laid out the Black Rose’s mask, his expression had been guarded. Now it was raw, open confusion.